GeneRoddenberry-related stories
Posted Oct 24th 2009 10:02AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Celebrities, Reality-Free, Star Trek: Original Series
You have to admire the tenacity of writer
Harlan Ellison. He filed a
lawsuit against CBS Paramount accusing the company of not paying him for all the ancillary income the company earned from the episode of
Star Trek he wrote in 1967, "City on the Edge of Forever." Yesterday,
Ellison announced on his web site that he had settled with CBS Paramount and he was very, very pleased. He didn't reveal how much money he made, but he probably did quite well.
After all, CBS Paramount has done very, very well with that original
Star Trek episode. It's regarded as -- and is -- the all-time best show in the entire original
ST canon. Ironically, Ellison never liked what Roddenberry and company had done with his script.
Continue reading Harlan Ellison bests CBS Paramount over 42 year-old Star Trek episode
Posted May 12th 2009 7:00PM by Brad Trechak
Filed under: OpEd, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Reality-Free, Star Trek: Original Series
Over at ComicMix, Alan Kistler has
written annotations for the new Star Trek movie and how well it fits into the overall continuity of the show. It's a pretty impressive list and does prove that despite the blatant contradiction of the show's history as a result of time travel, they were actually pretty good with getting the details of the characters correct.
Spoilers follow this paragraph. You have been warned.
Continue reading Everything you didn't want to know about the Star Trek movie
Posted Apr 12th 2009 10:00AM by Brad Trechak
Filed under: OpEd, Video, Reality-Free, Star Trek: Original Series
In what may be the most frightening piece of nostalgia ever produced, someone has posted their video from Paramount's
Star Trek Adventure online, which was at Universal Studios way back when. Judging by the ages of the original actors, it was probably produced sometime around
Star Trek IV or
Star Trek V (or possibly VI) and serves as a wonderful example of how quickly everybody involved with this American icon was willing to sell out.
Of course, Roddenberry himself was selling IDIC medallions by season three of the original series, so this blatant commercialism should come as no surprise. Does anybody out there actually have a video of themselves participating in this? If so, did you have to wait on line for it? If I did something like this ever, I would likely bury the videotape somewhere and hope it was never discovered again.
Someone's embarrassing video is after the jump.
Continue reading A Star Trek blast from the past - VIDEO
Posted Mar 9th 2009 8:24AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: TV on the Bigscreen, OpEd, Reality-Free, Star Trek: Original Series
Star Trek will be in movie theaters on May 8, 2009, and with it the hopes and fears of Trekkers worldwide. I'm one of those longtime fans who is both excited and apprehensive about
J.J. Abrams' take on Gene Roddenberry's vision of
Wagon Train to the stars. Yes, that was once all it aspired to be. It was just going to be a TV show. Roddenberry optimistically referred to a five year mission in the intro hoping it might last that long.
Of course, that's a long, long time ago -- in a galaxy far, far away, if you mix sci-fi metaphors. Now, we're poised to see a new incarnation of
Star Trek, and
the new trailer is online. Take a look at it after the jump.
Continue reading I'm trying to be excited about the new Star Trek trailer - VIDEO
Posted Dec 19th 2008 4:29PM by Mike Moody
Filed under: Obituaries, Reality-Free
Star Trek fans everywhere are mourning the loss of Majel Barrett Roddenberry, who
died yesterday at her home in Bel Air, Calif., after a battle with leukemia. Barrett Roddenberry was the widow of
Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who boldly cast her as second-in-command of the USS Enterprise in the original 1964
Star Trek pilot.
She didn't stay in command for long, thanks to the NBC execs of the time, but Roddenberry remained aboard the Enterprise in the role of Nurse Chapel and as the voice of the ship's computer. She went on to voice the computer for six
Trek series and many of the films, including J.J. Abrams'
upcoming reboot. She also guest-starred as Lwaxana Troi, the Captain Picard-chasing empath, on
Star Trek: The Next Generation and
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Continue reading Majel Barrett Roddenberry's star will never fade for Trek fans
Posted Dec 11th 2008 6:07PM by Mike Moody
Filed under: Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Casting, Reality-Free, Star Trek: Original Series
It's almost as if J.J. Abrams is patting nervous
Star Trek fans on the back and cooing, "It's OK. Everything's gonna be alright."
Variety reported this week that Majel Barrett-Roddenberry will reprise her role as
the voice of the Enterprise computer for Abrams' upcoming
Star Trek flick. Barret-Roddenberry, the widow of
Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, voiced the computer for all six
Trek series and many of the movies. She also played Christine Chapel in the original series and two of the films as well as "Number One" in
Star Trek's original pilot. And who could forget her as
Lwaxana Troi, the randy Betazoid from
The Next Genertation?
Continue reading Star Trek creator's widow to voice J.J. Abrams' Enterprise computer
Posted Jul 10th 2008 10:03AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Retro Squad, Standout Episodes, Frasier
The bar mitzvah is a Jewish rite of passage, the time in a boy's life when he becomes a man -- symbolically -- by reading from the Torah. When a girl does the ritual, it's called a bat mitzvah. I mention all this because in TV, the bar/bat mitzvah has been the catalyst for some wonderful episodes, mostly on sitcoms.
The Simpsons celebrated Krusty the Klown's bar mitzvah in the episode "Today I Am A Klown," which was a variation on one of the all-time great sitcom bar mitzvahs of all time: the episode "Buddy Sorrell, Man and Boy," on
The Dick Van Dyke Show. Square Pegs shared "Muffy's Bat Mitzvah" with viewers, and this past season,
Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David used his friend Jeff Greene's daughter Sammi's bat mitzvah to announce that he never put a gerbil up his butt.
Continue reading Frasier: Star Mitzvah - VIDEO
Posted Feb 23rd 2008 4:39PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: TV on the Bigscreen, Celebrities
Don't you just love the web? News traveling so fast, ideas extrapolated and speculated upon based on the simplest of facts. That said, here's a sweet little tidbit that I found amusing. Tom Cruise was spotted on the Los Angeles set of the new
Star Trek feature film. He reportedly was visiting writer/director JJ Abrams. The two men, you'll recall, collaborated on
Mission Impossible 3.
This
exclusive, courtesy of JFXOnline, revealed that Tom stuck around the set for a couple of hours. Prior to this sighting, there had also been talk last fall that Abrams had wanted to enlist the superstar to make a brief cameo appearance in the revamped
Star Trek opus, telling the story of how creator Gene Roddenberry's original characters came to be. How Captain Kirk made it out of the Star Fleet Academy (in
The Wrath of Khan he said he cheated on his Kobyashi Maru simulation test), as well as the first time Kirk met the half-Vulcan, half-human Mr. Spock.
Continue reading Tom Cruise visits Trek set
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